House of Sand and Secrets (Books of Oreyn #2)(55)

“There’s something wrong with you,” Jannik says, very calmly, and still not looking at me. “You trap us in this farce of a marriage so that you can escape Pelimburg, you tie me to your side, tell me my leash is as long I want, only it never is.”

“I’m sorry.”

“I stay at your side, and you kick me away,” he continues as if my interruption did not exist, “I stray, and you drag me back to heel. You pull me this way and that, and you use me, Felicita. But let’s get one thing settled between us now. I am not your f*cking house dog.” The third eyelids peel back, and I am left looking into indigo so deep it hides everything.

“You’re not listening.”

“Neither are you.”

Whatever remaining desire that was in my system is replaced by anger. Anger that is reflected a thousandfold in Jannik’s hunched shoulders. We sit side by side, curled in on ourselves. I would have thought that this was exactly what he wanted. “Why are you turning this down now?”

“You have no idea what it is you’re suggesting. You’ve understood nothing I’ve ever said.”

“Everything you’ve told me has been evasive at best.” I cross my arms over my front, and try press away the strange ache behind my breastbone. “We – exchange – blood, and I know where you are, I can sense your physical condition. It will work in our favour, and we can use it to rescue Isidro. Isn’t that what you want?”

“It’s also f*cking permanent.”

That, I hadn’t realized. Things Harun and Jannik said make more sense now, but I do not want to believe it. I cannot. “It’s – what – but, Dash?” I frown, hug myself tighter. Whatever bond was between them, it ended when he died, that much I know.

“We hadn’t.”

“Hadn’t what?”

“Hadn’t finished it.” He smiles emptily, and stares at the far wall. “The one thing I should really thank my mother for, I suppose. Making sure that I didn’t let myself get too attached to him. That I fed from others, and never completed the bond. I could feel a little of what he went through, you’re right, but he would not have felt the same.” The smile falters. “We would need more than that for you to be able to know where I am, to have any real clarity, don’t you see?”

“How much more?” Pain prickles my nerves. Jannik’s magic isn’t its usual feather-touch. It ant-marches across my skin, biting me. “What are you doing?”

“Nothing,” he mutters, and takes a deep breath; he’s not looking at my face, instead he’s focusing on the crimson silk of my dress, pushed up around my knees. The stinging magic fades, leaving me itchy and on edge. “I don’t think you know what you’re asking,” he says, finally. “Come back here.”

I let myself be guided into place again, straddling him. But it feels stupidly awkward now, like we’re trying to capture something we’ve already lost. “So explain to me.”

He’s quiet. Then I feel his fingers and thumbs on my bare knees, stroking tiny circles against the skin. I don’t stop him, but I relax a little, although I’m not sure why. The fatcandle sputters out, and we are left in a protective wrapping of shadows.

When he starts talking, his voice is very low, so soft I strain to hear him properly. “A bond between bloodlines is more than a marriage contract. It’s a binding of lives. We will start off by knowing little things, like where the other is at any given moment, and slowly, that builds. We become aware of moods, of pains, and fears.” He stops, laughs bitterly, “Each other’s happiness.”

It doesn’t sound as terrible as he seems to think it is. A little invasive.

“And then you’ll realize you don’t know whose thoughts are whose. Only, by that time, you’re happy in your symbiosis; you can’t imagine a world, a life, without your partner. And then one day one of us will die.”

I swallow around the sand in my throat.

“Do you have any idea what happens when half of your mind dies?”

“You’re making this up,” I say when I find my voice. Even though I knew, or had guessed to just how bad it could get.

He shakes his head.

I lean forward and rest my forehead against his, and step off a cliff higher than Pelim’s Leap. “I don’t care,” I whisper, and it is a confession so long in coming that it pinches my chest, a spasm of pain and fear and terrible longing. The truth hurts, I realize with a dispassionate clarity. Especially a truth I’ve tried to tear out of my heart every time I was reminded it was there. A truth I could never face, could only ever view side-long, briefly.

It’s Jannik’s magic that answers, it mirrors his fingers, stroking against me, rippling under the layers of petticoats and silks, touching my skin with the soothing coolness of a breeze in the middle of the summer heat waves.

I pull myself closer against him, letting my breast rest against his. His heart is beating fast. Like mine, but the fear is gone. His arms come up and wrap around me, holding me tight. I relax, and drop my head against his shoulder.

“If you do this,” he says, after we have sat like this for many minutes. “I want you to tell me that you understand that there’s no going back from it.”

“Yes.”

“So say it,” he says, his breath huffing against my hair, tickling my ear.